A context awareness technology allows an IPTV service to be more user-centric and adaptive to user preferences. In a real environment, several types of context awareness factors may be considered, which dynamically vary.
In a home networking environment, a context awareness IPTV service is affected by some factors such as location, time, device performance, network property, etc. In a home networking environment, context information is obtained through a sensor for sensing environmental factors such as voice, motion, temperature, moisture, brightness, etc. Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a common technology for acquiring the context information, because of small size and low fabrication cost thereof. All the context information, which is obtained in this manner, is gathered to an indoor local context manager (for example, set-top box). The local context manager is not smart enough to make a context inference determination related to flow control, service quality management, etc. on the basis of the context information. When the context inference determination is made in consideration of several factors, the IPTV service may be frequently interrupted.